Hey Canadians!! 🇨🇦💚🇨🇦 How do you do Sustainable?

[Jennifer3225]

Hi all After the success of Earth Day 2023, I am excited to see just how everyone is doing for their sustainable efforts at your property here in Canada.🇨🇦 🍃

Compostable packaging

Earth Friendly Cleaning?

Collect Food Waste

What is important to you?

1. Culture? Do you recognize nearby Indigenous Communities? In Canada we have 94 actionable items for truth and reconciliation. It’s every Canadians commitment to make and facilitate peace!
2. Language French/English/Both
3. Do you use Solar lights?
4. Do you up cycle your furniture?
5. Do you make a point of what packaging you bring into your listing?
6. Nature -How do you support Mother Earth? Do you showcase local trails?
7. Economy- Do you support local? Do you do local gifting? 
8. Do you grow food? Do you collect Food Waste?

Please let me know. We are compiling a list of items that Canadians 🇨🇦 are already doing to promote their sustainability in their homes?

Let me know!

[Kelly1924]

Hello @Jennifer3225,

great question! 

We have a vegetable and herb garden at our Airbnb as well as at home. (I personally have been plant based for 7 years now 🌱)

We buy furnishings and furniture second hand when possible, to prevent it landing in the dumps, we promote the use of recycling and composting and provide the bins, we buy recycled cottons/linens as much as possible, we have outdoor solar lights and we have provided our guests with an Electric Vehicle Charging Station. 

Small changes by many, make a huge impact 🌱🌎❤️

[Sheila667]

@Kelly1924 thanks for sharing! Were your outdoor solar lights challenging to instal? 

[Pamela1221]

Hello @Jennifer3225,

Love that you're asking this! Sustainability is the key to our Airbnb. Our place is completely run by solar power. No hook ups to the electrical grid.

We lived off grid for 5 years before sharing the space as an airbnb this spring.

We built the whole house and our outside kitchen reusing and re-imagining as many materials as possible. All furniture is either made by us or rescued from elsewhere. 

We replaced our propane range top with an induction hob to keep indoor air quality safer. While our outdoor kitchen has a propane BBQ and pizza oven.

We provide glass food storage containers, water jugs and beeswax wrappers for extra food storage. 

All biodegradable soaps, conditioners, dish washing liquids, and body washes are provided in refillable glass dispensers and are safe for our grey water system. Our toilet uses minimal to no water so there is less wasted water in flushing.

We encourage recycling and provide a compost bin (I'm happy to say everyone has used it so far).

All our outdoor lighting is solar powered as well to reduce the load on our main batteries. 

Our garden has fresh herbs for guests to use and many pollinator attracting flowers for our other guests.

We have a trail through the woods and we're very fortunate to have many local trails in the area that we add to our local guide as we find new spots. 

We also have many low tech ways to cool the space before air conditioning is needed.

All in all we are trying to minimize our footprint and that of our guests while they visit our recycled Silo.

Can't wait to see what others are doing, I'm sure there are things we can learn from them.

[Jennifer3225]

@Pamela1221 @Sher1100 @Kelly1924 

If we were to put together a tool kit for Airbnb hosts of all seasons of sustainability (Never Ever to Off the Grid), What should we include with it?

Let me know..

Jen

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[Sher1100]

@Jennifer3225 This is such an important part of hosting.  I encourage my guests to leave their vehicle parked and enjoy the area on foot, or by bike.  As my guest studio is located right downtown in the middle of it all there is no need to start the engine. I give my guests trail recommendations to our over 300km of single track biking trails which are all accessible without taking a vehicle to the trailheads.    I recycle all my towels that are no longer usable in the studio by sending them to the local SPCA.  Shampoo, conditioners and body wash are in refillable containers, some of them are filled with locally made soaps. A basket of 'clean rags' for guests to use instead of paper towels is always helpful.  LED lights of course.  Low pressure faucets....no complaints on this yet....!  No plastic water bottles - a filtered jug instead.   Little gifts from local businesses like our own 'Fernie Brewery' and Chocolatier.   Some of the furniture in my studio has been re-purposed from my own collection of stuff!  And a little 'herb' patch in my garden if guests want to use.  Every little bit helps!!

[Jennifer3225]

@Sher1100 I love your ideas and the basket of rags is a good one to get rid of paper towel. 

You posting here will help us shape a tool kit for hosts in Canada and really ensure that what needs to be promoted and recognized is on point for us here in the great white north.

Question. Do you do anything  with the indigenous neighbours? Let me know

Jennifer 🙂 

[Jennifer3225]

@Sheila667 Would love to hear your ideas!

[Sheila667]

Morning Canadian Hosts and @Jennifer3225 ! Plants improve indoor air quality and I love how they look in my home! @Sher1100 I'm also thinking about solar lights to hang in our trees at the cottage - what do you think?

 

 

 

[Sher1100]

Yes, solar string lights in trees look so amazing! I have some solar pathway lights and a string of solar 'bumble bees'. You need to make sure that the solar panel for the string lights gets enough light during the day to keep them lit up at night.  My back yard is under a canopy of trees and gets little direct sunlight.  A nice 'cool' area when it gets hot out.  

[Jennifer3225]

@Sheila667  Plants.. you can never have enough and they are so on trend right now, that the perfect gift for a hospitality event may just replace the wine bottle.... Wait a minute... maybe not.. how about a plant and some wine.

Thanks for reaching out on this topic. Canadians are really into the importance of Sustainability and as a country we are well poised to showcase our ability as Canadian Hosts to make choices that matter to our guests, the planet, people and of course the bottom line behind hosting on Airbnb.

Keep sharing the good story of Sustainability, and the importance of the 94 actions in the Truth and Reconciliation Report,  as it relates to First Nation Communities, which based on @Shanel31 's post is important to Canadians Coast to Coast. 

Jennifer

[Shanel31]

Hello @Jennifer3225  and all other Canadian hosts. 

I love that this is being a topic that has been getting so much attention lately!

We are out here in the Shuswap area of British Columbia and we are all about finding new ways to part take in sustainability. In addition to the annual Spring Clean up we have been organizing additional clean ups for Earth Day and now a monthly beach clean up!

We have several rentals in the area and try to source out recycled or upcycled products. We always try to buy second hand furniture, or take old furniture to turn into flower boxes which is a unique niche our guests always enjoy. We source out recycled products like recyclable coffee pods for our rentals with Kerigues (Tim Hortons recently started selling recyclable pods and the guests really like the Tim Hortons Coffee as they see them everywhere in their Canadian travels) 
We recently sourced out a table cloth for a rental recently that was made from recycled materials!
I also had a client who recently purchased a new house and wanted to buy all new furnishings from IKEA although I pushed for upcycle I was pleasantly surprised to see larger companies like IKEA that had a whole section on their website about sustainability. I think the more people that talk about it the more people will become mindful. 

We started a program in our community a few years ago called "The Seed Exchange" we have a carving of a canoe at the end of our driveway made from recycled wood, the exchange allows community members and travelers in our Airbnb to "take or leave seeds"
You can just stop and browse through all the seeds people have left and take what you want to use in your garden or you can leave seeds if you have left overs after planting your own garden. Not only does it get more people excited about gardening, people are saving money and I have so much fun watching people coming by or getting to chat with other gardeners. 

Lastly we are in a region that is surrounded by Indigenous cultures, the closest being the Secwepemc First Nations. We provide reading material in our Airbnb so people know the best places to learn about the culture and history. The Quaaout Lodge is only minutes away from our Airbnb so we can direct guests to take cultural tours, visit the sweat lodges, explore the lands by foot, boat or take a snowshoeing tour. They also have amazing lessons to learn in Ethnobotany (medicinal plants and food). Learn about drum making, paddle painting, dreamcatcher making and more!

We are also home to one of the largest Salmon Run's. We encourages our guests to visit Tsutswecw Provincial Park for  "Salute to the Sockeye" festival which runs late September to 3rd week of October. This is such a great opportunity to learn about the cycles of the Salmon and the importance of sustainability though our First Nation cultures. 

Salute to the SockeyeSeed ExchangeQuaaout Lodge Cultural ExpierenceRecycled table cloth

[Jennifer3225]

@Shanel31 Old Furniture to garden boxes.. tell me more! Coming out in September, may just work to understand the sustainability of the cycle of salmon while also hitting some of those big 5 golf courses on the Shuswap. 

I remember attending your community event with @Sher1100  and the way you all talked about the sustainable efforts, that are really effortless for you all in the west are inspiring.

The learnings and the culture that can be found with the engagement with the Secwepemc First Nations would be inspiring.  If I am coming I will bring tobacco from the Wahta First Nations here or The Moose Deer Point First Nations, whom we are neighbours of.

The more you talk about the west...the more I look for ways to get there.

Inspired. #shuswap #sustainable 

Thanks for the great content in your post. 

[Shanel31]

Yes @Jennifer3225 ! Garden boxes out of anything!!
We have turned an old drink cooler into a flower box, old dresser where we staggered the drawers open and planted different vegetables.  I even had some old gutters around our property that I planted strawberries in and they loved that.

I have seen people use old applicances like an old stove or even a bath tub and one time seen someone use an old toilet as a planter haha

Basically anything you can put dirt in you can mostly repurpose into a planter

[Karen1100]

@Shanel31 Very inspiring ideas!